Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson loves hunting down and exposing scientific mistakes and bloopers in Hollywood films. But with «Barbie» he took a different approach. The scientist became curious: if the plastic world built at the Warner Bros. studio really existed, where would it be located?
Neil managed to carry out his investigation using frames showing the Moon, the Sun and palm trees. Here, for example, is one of them.
As the astrophysicist himself explained, he assumed that the position of the Moon limited the possible location of Barbie's world to between 20 and 40 degrees north latitude. This includes most of the United States, as well as part of Mexico, which the scientist rules out by definition.
The next thing Neil noticed – the palm trees. This narrowed the search by another 10 degrees: from 20 to 30 degrees north latitude. After that, all that remained was to match this with where the sun rises and sets – and in the film it appears over the ocean.
And here is what is interesting. Greta Gerwig herself, the film's director, has always said that she was inspired by the architecture of Palm Springs, but the researcher came to a different conclusion.
«By all appearances, this is the Florida Keys archipelago off the southern coast of Florida», – the scientist concluded.
